


Jonathan Sims & Mr. Leitner

by evanescent_jasmine



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell AU, Magic is no one's friend, Mention of death and extended sounds of brutal pipe murder, Web's gonna web, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22777870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanescent_jasmine/pseuds/evanescent_jasmine
Summary: Statement of Jonathan Sims, Practical Magician, on the subject of his madness and the means by which he achieved it.Jonathan Sims has lost enough people in his life. He refuses to let a fae steal the last of them.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Jonathan Sims & Mr. Leitner

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Practical Magician, Magician to the Crown, on the subject of his…

I find myself reluctant to put a word to it, even though it has been the focus of my research for some time now. There is, I suppose, no escaping it. 

On the subject of his madness, and the means by which he achieved it. 

Do you know, I have been called mad many times. There are some that feel magicians as a whole are quite mad, and among theoretical magicians what Mr. Leitner and I purportedly did and aimed for would have seemed…yes. Well. 

But I was not, not then. I have had to do a great deal of work to achieve my current state. Even now I still feel...myself. I hadn’t expected that, and perhaps it means I have not gone far enough yet. Although I suppose I wouldn’t know, would I? If I had changed. I apologize, then, if I cannot ease your mind in that regard. But I assume if you are reading this account, if you are seeking the answers I sought, the mere possibility of change won’t turn you away.

It’s all right if it frightens you. It frightened me too. 

But some things are more important, aren’t they?

I suppose I should start from the beginning. Given how emphatically Mr. Leitner has been working to scrub my studies and accomplishments from public consciousness, and given the damage I have done to my own reputation, I cannot trust that any accounts would remain of my life that would provide you with context beyond this document.

Therefore: I am Jonathan Sims, and I am a practical magician. One of two, at the time of writing this, although I had been training another three some time ago, much to my own mentor’s consternation. 

Now they are gone. Sasha was taken, or perhaps only changed. I still don’t know. All I know is it was the price of a fae-deal I...hadn’t known I was making, and that it was my fault. Tim...chose to go, to avenge her and his brother, to save the world from an incursion of those fae. And Martin…

Martin is brilliant, unbearably clever, and he did things I could not have imagined. And so he was stolen. He was stolen, unrightfully, and I mean to get him back. 

The roads to Fae are closed. We are a long way from the time of the Raven King, Jonah Magnus, and the doorways Smirke built have since crumbled. Some of his architecture still draws them—the tunnels under the Society of Magicians is one such maze, and you would do well to steer clear—but we have no way to return the favour, no way to see or hear or speak to them.

Except.

Except if they want to take you.

I was marked, once. They-Who-Weave-and-Watch-and-Wait is, I am told, their name for themselves. You might know them better as the Web. They found me as a child, but decided on another. 

Since then, I have been marked by encounters with some others, but those have sought to destroy me rather than carry me with them. Mr. Leitner claims to know the secret, claims it is too dangerous to entrust to one so reckless as I, and perhaps he is right. But I know also that he is a foolish, jealous man, and I know he guards his secrets like a dragon with its hoard, and I know it appeals to him to think that my students should come to ruin, just as his assistants did. 

I have, as a result, taken it upon myself to seek out accounts of people’s encounters with the fae. Mr. Bouchard of the Society of Magicians was most helpful in this regard, though I have no illusions it is out of selflessness. If anyone is going to find the old paths it will be the country’s foremost practical magician, and naturally Mr Bouchard would take credit for his assistance. He seems the sort of man who cares about these things. It hardly matters. I have what I want.

Most encounters are nothing—soured milk and stolen washing, pixies at best and human mischief at worst. Sometimes, rarely, they are not. You learn to get a feel for those accounts but here, I will save you the search.

Heed these names. Do not try their paths. They are dead-ends.

The Bone-turner will offer to change you and, ah, _take you where you need to be_ , but do not trust him. Where he thinks you need to be may not match your own perception of the matter, and he will exact his price either way. I paid for this mistake with two ribs. I try not to think of what he might be doing with them.

The Falling Titan is too vast to consider your wants or your needs. It cares nothing for you or what you may have to offer, although it may take it anyway. The Singing Many will only answer your calls if you are one of them. You do not want to become one of them.

The Piper will claim to lead you, if only you follow its song. Its price is blood, and your own will not be enough. I...It brings me some measure of comfort that I shied away from it, that I am still _human_ enough to shy away from it, even as a magician. Others may not consider it too high a price to pay, however, and so I have taken the liberty of disposing of the accounts that lead to it. 

There is no path through the Lightless Flame that will allow you to arrive intact, and the Hunter has no interest in your arriving at all. He has called to me, but I have seen what he has done to my friend, and I know well that he will not lead me to my quarry.

Should you try to call upon Mr. Pitch, know he is dead. I have been unable to dismiss the magic I used to call to him as a result—you may have heard of the column of darkness that surrounds my current abode. I have hopes it will dissipate before long, whether because I will find my way to the Foglands or. Well.

I have travelled the paths of Too-Close-I-Cannot-Breathe. They may well lead where you wish to go, but the Buried do not relinquish their travellers so easily. There is no way forward there.

I have no quarter with the changelings and strangers. One of my own has killed many of their own, and the only reason they do not come after me is because I myself almost died in the process, and I believe that and...Tim’s death were considered sufficient exchanges. I cannot advise you on that path, and my warning against it comes with my own biases. Your choice is your own. 

Which leaves me, in the end, with two: the Web and what we call the Spiral, as it is the One Alone who has my student and obscures my path. If other Faelands have been found in your time, I wish you the best in trying to navigate them, but those are what the Magicians of the Golden Age have been able to document, and those are the choices I know.

I have already told you of my brief history with the Web. I turned to the Spiral, then.

This type of creature is more elusive than most. In the histories, only one of them was ever bound to a magician—the fabled Gertrude Robinson, of course. Some of the accounts Mr. Bouchard gave me included descriptions that match Gertrude Robinson’s fae, who was called Michael; curly blond hair and large, distorted hands, sharp. He, It, was drawn by madness. Or perhaps caused it? The connection is, as of yet, unclear, 

What is clear is that they are drawn to spirals, fractals, headache-inducing colours. I have painted every wall a riot of them. I have been drawing spirals for days. I cannot recall when I last slept. 

I hope this will be enough. 

Part of me knows it won’t.

*

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Practical Magician, Magician to the Crown, on the subject of his still _stubbornly-maintained_ sanity. 

I sleep. 

I do not mean to. I have been drinking enough coffee as to feel my veins skittering under my skin, trying to escape with every beat of my heart, and somehow it isn’t enough. I can feel my body succumbing and with every try I can push myself perhaps an extra hour, perhaps two, before I find myself suddenly waking an indeterminable age later. I know now that what I was so confident calling madness was merely obsessiveness, perhaps a touch of panic-induced delirium at best. Not true madness. Not yet.

This is...not working.

The person whose path I am following, a Miss Lydia Halligan, suffered from insomnia, or perhaps it was induced in her, or some combination of both, but without it I find my efforts are falling short. Perhaps, with another few weeks, my hold on reality would be made tenuous enough from exhaustion that the Spiralling fae would finally deign to visit, but I fear I would make far too easy a meal then and...I fear that every passing week would bury Martin further and further in the fog.

I refuse to let him fade. To let that _so-called_ Lonely Gentleman win.

I am, perhaps, being too tame. Coffee and sleeplessness and fractals not exciting enough bait for this fae. But how does one work up a little madness in oneself? Shall I go wandering the moors and see if the lonely wilderness does it? But if everything that has happened has not done it, everything I have seen and experienced...I shudder to think of what it might take.

No. I refuse to think this way might be shut as well. I am a magician. The foremost practical magician of the realm, in fact. If there is no spell that would assist me, I will make one. 

*

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Practical Magician, Magician to the Crown, on the subject of his continued attempts to achieve insanity.

It is remarkably easy to buy an axe in Central London. Harder to sneak it to Mr. Leitner’s townhouse but not impossible. It is simple enough to conceal beneath my coat on the way and a glamour takes care of the rest. Given how paranoid he is about me and my assistants, one would expect more protections around his library, but Mr. Leitner hates other people equally as much and his one right hand man has, I have been told, broken with him, and so it is merely protections of the magical sort. They are as outdated and feeble as my mentor himself and have made no provisions for his door being broken with an axe instead of a spell.

And when he caught me, well, an axe is also a very good deterrent against more spellwork. 

I took what I could. I spent many a day staring at those shelves, memorising the names. Ex Altiora. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. A Disappearance. I took Ex Altiora without a thought, and the Key of Solomon, and a handful of others I did not look at but which simply _felt_ right.

Mr. Leitner knew at a glance what they were, or perhaps I am looking more maddened already, for he said, “Es Mentiras?” 

He has always been overfond of the most complicated of the fae names. 

I said, “If I’m lucky,” and fled, and the roads obeyed me as they always have, as Mr Leitner could not dream of them obeying him, and so I return to my column of darkness, to my desk, and I work.

I begin with Ex Altiora.

*

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Practical Magician, so on and so forth, on his continued failure to summon the Spiralling fae.

Despite the Lichtenberg figure featuring so prominently within the woodcuts of Ex Altiora, the storms it has allowed me to conjure have yet to strike me with any lightning or, indeed, attract any creatures, fae or otherwise. All I have to show for my efforts is a cold. 

I have had the opportunity to peruse, briefly, the other books I took.

One is, seems to be, a children’s book.

I...know it well, and I fear I know what it is telling me. 

I will try with the other books first. I have hopes for the Key of Solomon.

*

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Practical Magician, for all the good it’s done me.

I have exhausted the resources at my disposal. The books were of no use and Mr. Leitner...Mr. Leitner is dead. Found murdered in his home. I’m sure, given our, ah, altercation, that suspicions will fall on me, but I find it difficult to muster concern or worry, or even grief for Mr. Leitner. Whatever I thought of him before, I have come to realise he is merely a sad man, lording over knowledge I do not think he ever understood. He did not deserve to be murdered, perhaps, but. 

Sasha didn’t deserve what happened to her. Nor did Tim, or Tim’s brother, or Martin, or any number of people who could have been _helped_ , if he shared his knowledge. Or destroyed that which was too dangerous to be known. 

Now that knowledge, all of his library, is lost to me, taken by the police who will, I imagine, summarily lock them away or let them slip out of their hands to the highest bidder. Even if I could contrive to break into their headquarters, I…I doubt that would help.

It is clear to me, now, that the path I should least like to take is the one I...Because that’s how things go in fairytales, isn’t it? The sort of price they exact. To regain something precious, you must first—

I will open the last book to its last page.

It is, I am told, polite to knock. 

*

Statement of Jonathan Sims. At least I...I believe so? I, ah...I can feel the strings stretching under my skin, through my veins. I can feel them and it’s entirely possible they are directing me, and so...am I Jonathan Sims? Am I myself?

Does it matter?

That is what Annabelle Cane said when I asked her. I was beside myself, trying to pick the threads out from under my skin, and I said of course it matters, of course. If I am not myself then who am I? What is this for? That I wouldn’t wish to rescue Martin only to lead him to another waiting trap. She laughed. Just laughed.

I think I understand why, now.

I suppose that will not make a great deal of sense to you, nor would you care for my self-pitying navel-gazing. You want to know what happened after I knocked, don’t you? I do too. Unfortunately, I cannot present a complete account. I do not know what way I travelled or where I travelled to. 

I remember knocking on the door on the last page of that book. Once. Twice. I remember the door opened, a creak of wood that did not, somehow, surprise me, even though it was not wood, could not have been wood. I remember the legs unfurling from inside of it, and the coarse hairs on each of them as Mr. Spider greeted me with an embrace.

And then I was in a web, and the web was the world. 

You must understand. I don’t merely mean it was large or that it stretched on beyond anything I could know. I mean I…I was in the web, and the web was the world. I cannot explain how I knew this. The gaps between the threads were nothing, darkness and starlight, and they were everything, and I was in the web. Part of it, not merely on it. This was not the Singing Many. It did not consume me. But I, who sought to turn magic to my will, am I not one who watches and weaves? I could see the threads that weaved through me, in turn, from me and within me, and knew that the web was me as well. They-Who-Weave-and-Watch-and-Wait are all of us. 

Do you understand? 

No...No, of course you don’t. Well, in any case, this caused me no small amount of distress, as you can imagine. Worse still when I found I couldn’t pull them away, although that did not stop me from trying. 

Either my screaming or the bloody mess I made drew Annabelle Cane to me. And that’s when we had our little chat. 

Unlike most fae, I am certain that is, in fact, her name, and she has no fear of my writing it. Perhaps I am writing it because she wants me to. Wants the curious magicians who may come across this account to knock on the door as well. Perhaps I am writing it to save you the trouble I have gone to and show you the solution. 

Because, although Annabelle would not show me the path to the Foglands or permit me passage through the web, she asked me if there wasn’t something she could do to make it easier. 

I have not slept since my return. I do not feel the need for sleep. Every so often, when I can feel my body growing heavier, I find the threads Annabelle showed me and tug, tighten them, and it’s like winding up a toy. Whether it is the threads that wake me or the pain of the tug, it works. 

She did not ask for payment, and I am not so naive as to think she offered me this out of the goodness of her heart. It’s simply that I do not care. Whatever her price, I will pay it when the time comes, or refuse to and be taken, and that is the way of things. 

I do not know what day it is, or what time. The column of darkness already stole much of my awareness of days passing, and this has taken the rest. All hours are midnight now. I had clocks, I feel certain of that. A watch as well? I destroyed them. I work. I wait. I prepare.

And sometimes, in the moments just before I need to find the threads again, when I am not paying attention, I see colour. Bright yellow. I see a figure standing at odd angles, as though viewed through water. And the figure’s hands reach for me, before I tug the threads, and then it is gone.

Its hands look sharp. The threads are sharper.

If this is not a mere delusion, if I have caught the interest of the Spiralling fae, this will be the last of my records. I must begin my wait for it before the mirrors. The mirrors are the path, and in the mirrors I will see it whole, in all of its angles. If I fail, then that will be that. And if I succeed, I shall find Martin and bring him home and abandon this entire accursed business of magic, practical or otherwise. 

We are not meant for magic. It is not ours. But I know such a statement from a self-proclaimed madman would have done nothing to dissuade me in my own pursuit, and it will do nothing for yours. If your hubris should bring you to these depths, as mine did, as Mr. Leitner’s, I hope these records provide you with some guidance and wish you luck in finding the paths you need. I only ask that you wish me the same. 

I am...scared. 


End file.
